


A Gathering Lacking Blood

by DragonflyxParodies



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Trinity (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, But that doesn't actually come up, Clark is the Best Uncle Ever, Crime AU, Cuz He's A Good Nephew Like That, Family, Gen, Jason Sets His Fam Up, Mentions of Diana actually, Multidimensional Shenanigans, Pre-Trinity, but like he's a good dad, domestic Bruce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 05:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies
Summary: In a world darker than that we know, Jason finds one Kal-El bereft of family and home; and what else can he do but fix it? In which Kal finds a boy who calls him family and decides solitude is not enough.





	A Gathering Lacking Blood

**Author's Note:**

> I have  
a very elaborate storyline and au surrounding this fic.  
But IDK if I'll ever get the chance to write it; so while this is technically a prologue, I had to hammer it out. Further explanations at the bottom.

It takes him a moment to – to _recognize _the sound. The sound of another heartbeat. It’s so alien he almost doesn’t stop, almost lets his body keep moving and his eyes keep burning. And he would have, if not for the voice.

“Uncle Kal?”

_Kal_.

When he turns, it is to see a boy standing unsteadily on a pile of rubble, one gloved hand tight around a protruding steel bar and the other holding a scuffed, scratched red helmet against his hip.

He can see the scars on the boy’s flesh, vivid and sharp and so very many of them hidden beneath his flesh –

“How do you know my name?” He asks, and his voice cracks and shatters with disuse. There’s something sad in the boy’s eyes – a strange aqua color that flash green when they land on the wreckage behind him.

“Are you alright?” The boy asks, instead, and Kal-El feels his breath leave his lungs in a rush.

“I – shit, sorry. I’m not…I won’t be here long. There was a mix-up, my partner will sort it out and I’ll be back home soon. I’m from a – a different world. Alternate universe.”

He doesn’t – he doesn’t understand. And his incomprehension must show on his face, because the boy slides down the rubble’s slope until he’s standing right before him, and offers a hesitant kind of grin.

“You’re not my uncle here, maybe. But back home, you’re pretty much the only family member I still trust. ‘N it might be stupid to assume the same of you, ‘cuz you’re not the same person, but – I’m not the smart one in the family.” The words are harsh and deprecating, even if the boy’s tone isn’t, but Kal-El still has to physically hold himself back from the immediate denial that rushes to his lips.

_Family_, this boy had said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

Kal has a hand on the boy’s arm, and his feet are touching the ground, before he knows what to do with himself.

“It isn’t – _safe_. Come with me.”

The boy cranes his neck over Kal’s shoulder, eyes the shattered, lifeless metal husks blanketing what remains of a once-grand city, and snorts.

“Ain’t much safer for you either, by the looks of things. Might be able to help, ‘fore I go.”

Kal stares for another moment, unable to –

“What’s your name?”

“Shit, forgot, didn’t I? ‘M Jason. And I’m your _favorite _nephew, thank you very much. I _have _thrown down for that title, ‘n don’t you forget it.”

There’s something watery and weak behind the bravado, but Kal cannot parse it out, not then, not with –

When he lifts off of the ground, the boy grabs onto him with such confidence that, he nearly freezes. And all Jason does is grin, when he meets his eyes.

X

He has three brothers, and three sisters. But only one of them is a _niece_, he adds quickly, and there is a story there.

None of them are Kryptonian. Jason’s father is just a dear, beloved friend. Kal is, to him, the only man in the world worth his trust, Jason says.

And there is an aunt, too. Jason looks heartbroken when Kal has no idea what he is speaking of, when he first brings her up. Another friend, not a sister. Or perhaps a sister, just one without blood laying heavy between them. Jason is also the favorite nephew of her, he claims.

Jason does not offer up much more information. Kal is almost grateful. He does not know how much more he could handle.

His world is cold and bleak and exhausting; all he does is fight. He tells Jason as much, that the city had once stood proud and regal and pristine, when he’d first arrived. Kal doesn’t remember if there’d been people. But the first metal contraption had come, and attacked him, and Kal has spent his entire life fighting, losing everything to the haze of his present.

He thinks he remembers cornfields, a farm. But only when his bones are too heavy to let him breathe and his eyes too tired to let him sleep.

But though the metal monsters crash through the city, Kal does not leave his hideaway or Jason the next day. Jason watches him with dark, solemn eyes, and Kal tries not to stare quite so intensely back.

“I’ve never seen you so skinny before.” Jason finally says, and Kal starts. Jason, as young as he is – nineteen, he’d said, as if it was a confession, a sin, a secret – is built solidly and strongly; he is taller and broader than Kal is.

“What do you mean?”

“Ain’t healthy, Uncle Kal. You gotta take care of yourself, ‘kay?” He asks it like a promise, worry heavy in his shoulders, and Kal could _cry_.

“You don’t speak of your – of _our_ family much.”

It’s as if he’s been struck, Kal thinks faintly, the way Jason curls inward and tenses, his expression shuttering closed and his gaze moving firmly away.

“Something like the black sheep of the family.”

“Why?”

Kal thinks it’s the way he asks, firm and serious and immediate, that spills words from Jason’s lips.

“We’re all – heroes. Like you, y’know? Fighting crime and all. But B doesn’t kill, and neither do the rest of them.”

“…And you do?”

Jason’s jaw tenses, and he does not answer. Kal mulls this over for a moment, and then frowns.

“Why is this a problem?”

And if he’d –

Jason looks at him with something like wonder in his eyes, as if Kal had hung the sun for him, and –

He’d do anything for this boy, he realized, just to defend that – that _belief_.

X

On the second day, Kal hears something strange across the city and carries Jason to the origin of the noise. It is a circle at ground level, a strange purple-black swirl peeling back layers of reality. Kal’s flesh tingles near it, but it does nothing. Jason looks distinctly surprised, and then pleased, like a cat with a caught mouse.

When Kal says as much, the boy laughs.

“My partner – I’ve got two of them, y’know? Kori was gone, though. Purple means she’s back, that she got her girlfriend to come pick me up.”

And then, quieter, _I didn’t think she’d come back._

For a brief moment, Kal had considered keeping him there; had thought that he did not want this boy to leave but –

He couldn’t do that to him, not when he has someone waiting for him.

“Be safe.” Kal says instead, and the smile he gets in return is sweet.

“I’m glad we met, though. But –“

Jason takes a half step forward, pulls him into a hug. Kal’s arms lay limp at his side for a moment too long before rising – he doesn’t think he’s _ever _been hugged before.

“Go look for them. You deserve to find them.”

Their names are unfamiliar. But they settle on Kal’s tongue and in his heart like lead weights, and he holds them close as Jason slips free of him and disappears into the swirling abyss. It blinks out the moment it has swallowed him, and Kal stands alone amidst the ruins of a city and the bones of an army.

X

He finds him standing beside a window, a room full of life at his back. There is a fireplace, and large, cushy couches, and shelves full to bursting with all manner of books, and a heavy oak desk carved and glowing with polish and plush rugs and an upturned basket of children’s toys in the room’s center.

A woman lounges on a couch wearing a long white slip, her silken hair pulled into a knot at the base of her skull. A baby lays at her breast, one hand fisted in her dress and frowning despite his dreams. A blond girl and a raven-haired girl sit at her feet, absorbed in the crayons and papers in front of them. A smaller boy watches them with interest, a puzzle of some sort clutched to his chest, and an even younger boy in bright yellow sleeps on the floor beside him.

As he watches, two more children burst into the room and throw themselves at the woman, and Kal recognizes Jason immediately.

This Jason is so much younger, so much smaller – but there are no scars, and when he sees his family he beams.

Bruce Wayne meets his gaze, and lifts his chin, says something that Kal cannot catch because he –

He _knows_.

When his feet touch the ground, Bruce Wayne is waiting for him.

“There’s – one other.” He says, haltingly. Bruce nods slowly, not so much as blinking.

“We’ll find them.”

“Her name is Diana.”

And Bruce’s smile is all teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Shitty Alt Universe. Like super shitty. Kal's been locked in eternal battle in the ruins of Metropolis by Luthor, used as an experiment w/out the need for containment 'cuz Kal knows nothing else. Diana is still on Themyscira doing Warrior Shit bc the Amazons are Also Not Nice, and Bruce is out here decided he has to be Ultimate Crime God to fix Gotham; he kills, is corrupt af, etc, BUT is also Not An Abusive Jackass and happily has all the batkids in a loving relationship w/Talia (yes they're still adopted lmao). Talia dipped on Ra's when Bruce was like yo u wanna leave w/me we can whole ass rule Gotham and fight ur dad, cuz Romance. So while the circumstances and world are Terrible, the characters are wholesome af when they're not, y'know, Doing A Slaughter.  
Kal, Bruce, Talia, and Diana eventually end up together and raise the kids together cuz FOUND FAMILY DAMMIT and Luthor loses his shit once the great and feared Batman of Gotham shows up w/an invincible enforcer at his side (and they take him out before Bruce gets two!).  
And lots of hijinx w/the kids.
> 
> Anyway guess who is supposed to be writing their senior thesis and instead did this????


End file.
